1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable terminal such as PHS (Personal Handyphone System), a portable telephone and an information processing terminal such as a desktop type computer and a content data acquiring system using these terminals, and particularly to an information processing terminal and a content data acquiring systems adaptive for acquiring content data such as various music or image.
2. Conventional Technique
With spread of portable terminals such as a PHS or a portable telephone, transmission rate of data and quality of communication due to radio have been improved. The PHS and portable telephone mainly functions as a telephone set in the beginning and have been recently highly improved in functions. That is, these portable terminals can handle E-mail and access the Internet as an ordinary computer arranged in a home or an office.
There is a reasonable restriction that the size of the portable terminal must be a portable size. Therefore, the processing speed of CPU (Central Processing Unit) is limited in relation with batteries to be carried. Since various components must be arranged within a little volume, the mount of storage is limited and a mass storage cannot be used. The size of a display screen and the size of a speaker for sound output are also largely limited based on same reason. Therefore, it is attempted to substantially improve the functions of the portable terminal by transferring load of data processing on the side of the portable terminal to another device with reference to CPU or memory described above. One of the attempts is WAP (wireless application protocol) which is a protocol for obtaining Internet information from the portable telephone or the portable information terminal by radio.
FIG. 1 is schematic view of a communication system using WAP. A content data server 102 storing various content data and a WAP gateway 103 are connected with the Internet network 101. In such a communication system, when the portable terminal 104 requests acquisition of content data allocated to a predetermined URL (uniform resource locator) from the content data server 102, data described by HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) is transmitted to the WAP gateway 103. In the WAP gateway 103, the size of characters of the content data and a location where an image is displayed are calculated and the image is displayed for each page. Data of each screen is transmitted to the portable terminal 104 as binary data. Accordingly, when the WAP is used, since a displaying process to be carried out primarily on the side of the portable terminal 104 is carried out on the side of the WAP gateway 103, the load of a CPU can be reduced. Further, here, an image process concerning picture display is described. However, voice data can be also transmitted to the portable terminal 104 after a decrypting process on the side of the WAP gateway 103. Consequently, the output of video or sound can be carried out freely.
In this way, if a supplementary circuit or device represented by the WAP is used, the portable terminal 104 can expand the range of data for reproduction. However, as described above, mounting of output devices for reproduction of image or sound in the portable terminal 104 is limited due to limitation of the outer shape. Accordingly, there is a problem that even if the function for reproduction is improved, the improved function cannot be fully used.
In an example, it is supposed that the portable terminal 104 can receive sound data in an MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) format, and reproduce sound in a predetermined frequency range in a stereophonic form. In this case, however, most portable terminal 104 can contain only a single small speaker. Accordingly, sound cannot be reproduce stereophonically. Moreover, even if downloaded sound data is high quality sound, it is impossible to output sound so as to generate high quality sound. Therefore, when content data is acquired from the content data server 102, data property such as sound quality is checked, and then a peripheral device adaptive for the property is connected with the portable terminal 104 for the reproduction. In the foregoing example, if the portable terminal 104 is provided with line output terminals, an amplifier is connected with the line output terminals to amplify audio output stereophonically and a couple of speakers are connected with the amplifier to reproduce music. However, for this purpose, it is necessary to select peripheral device after the check of the acquired data, and this is complicate. In addition, there is a problem that only a person having specialized knowledge can select the peripheral device corresponding to content data, and it is not economic if people buy unnecessarily expensive device.
The portable terminal is described as the example hereinbefore. However, there is a same problem with respect to a computer such as a laptop computer or desktop computer for office use or home use in relation to the physical size and quality of content data, for example. In case of most laptop computers or wearable computers, enough sound quality or resolution of image cannot be obtained almost. In case of the computers such as a desktop computer, the same problem is caused more or less as the quality of content data is improved.
In conjunction with the above description, a data delivery system is disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei 11-136365). In this reference, the system is composed of a communication provider system for delivering various data to a user, an end user terminal for receiving and storing the data delivered from the content data provider system, and a communication network for transferring data between the communication provider system and the end user terminal. The communication provider system is composed of a memory section which stores a menu of the data desired by each end user and desired delivery timings of the data. The data is delivered to the end user terminal at the desired delivery timings based on the data registered on the memory means. The end user terminal receives the data delivered from the communication provider system, stores in order in a memory provided for the end user terminal, and outputs the stored data in accordance to an instruction from the end user.